


Nail

by baeberiibungh



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: AU, Acute Anxiety, Anxiety, Camden Did not die, Dating, F/M, First Date, M/M, Nil Dialogue, No Hale Fire, Presents, Unabused Isaac, anxiety disorders, everyone is human
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-25
Updated: 2015-12-25
Packaged: 2018-05-09 06:37:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,606
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5529638
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/baeberiibungh/pseuds/baeberiibungh
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stiles has so much anxiety and Derek just wants to help...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nail

Stiles can usually pass the day without internal breakdowns every five minutes. He had gotten better at bluffing his too fast brain. He knew the distracting tactics now, how to calm himself down without Scott or his dad rubbing his back while he pulled in open mouthed gasps of air, which was so stupid, so stupid, the oxygen was always there, but his body would go into a kind of lock down and it would be as if he were struggling on the surface of Mars, whooping on the little bit of air available, half convinced this is how he dies. 

There are many things that Stiles can get anxious about, some more than others, and some even more when he has to think of them beforehand. He ended up getting a panic attack when he went to ask Derek Hale, the Derek Hale, out on a date, figuring that he was already a bottom feeder in the school hierarchy. Derek, instead of laughing at him, carried him to the nurse office and sat with him while Stiles got a few pulls from the foul smelling oxygen tank the nurse’s office had. 

Stiles had a sneaking feeling that there was no oxygen in the tank really, but worked fine as a placebo for students like him, maybe, but he never dared ask outright, too thankful over the fact that he didn’t end up choking on his own tongue some day. Derek stayed till he was breathing again and almost required another go at the fake oxygen tank when Derek agreed to go on the date and gave a quick peck on his cheek. His feeling of awesome didn’t diminish even when Jackson came over with an uninterested Lydia in tow to laugh at his panic attack.

Scott raise to his rescue just like a best friend, which just made Jackson sneer at Scott too before he moved on to his table, probably to talk about how awesome his pecs were and how many times he waxed his hair or some more delights on the same length. Then Derek came and sat with Stiles and Scott, his posse of really sarcastic people, a.k.a Erica and Isaac as well as Boyd in the background, standing by their fearless leader, and it turned out not as awkward as Stiles had feared. 

Derek got up after his snacks were decimated, told Stiles to be ready by a certain time and went off with his friends. Stiles stared and drooled a bit looking at his ass walking away for a long time. Stiles reached home, giddy and of course pretty anxious, because the date was a few hours away. He had tugged Scott along with him to help select what to wear for the date and now he sat on Stiles’ bed, a chips packet open near him and made encouraging comments on whatever Stiles picked up to wear. Stiles was feeling disgusted. Such unadulterated praise was not what he was looking for.

Finally settling on one of his newer jeans, a tee and a clean flannel shirt over it, Stiles sat in his chair by his table to wait for Derek to reach. There was still one more hour to go before Derek would come, so Stiles pulled out his table from the corner and turned the it so that the long nail sticking out from one of the corner, usually covered by a stack of books when he is not using it, was out in the open. He turned to Scott, who was sitting near Stiles’ bookbag he had flung there when he reached home, and rummaged in his bag before coming up with an old copy. He tore two pages out of it and handed them to Stiles before settling back to eat more chips and tease Stiles.

Stiles took one of the page and folded it into two, sliding his finger over the crease before tearing the page into two equal pages. He kept repeating this over and over again with each piece he got so that by the end he had a handful of minuscule paper squares, talking with Scott in the meantime, his anxiety forgotten for the moment, his heart not beating out a heavy tattoo and mind fully occupied with only what he was saying and what his hands were doing. He then started pushing the paper squares onto the blunt nail, sliding the paper piece down its polished sides.

Stiles kept pushing the papers onto the nail so that the nail grew a layer of paper around it. When he is finished with pushing all the paper bits through, he would pull the whole stack off and then throw it at Scott shouting ‘It’s a party!’ Scott would laugh good naturedly, shake his head to get the paper bits stuck to his hair off and talk about whatever he was talking about. Scott never asked why Stiles did such a needless thing at all, was just glad that doing so seemed to calm Stiles a bit.

Derek came and Stiles was getting anxious again as to what he would be doing on his date, his experience being somewhat limited in that area. But Derek just got them burgers from Stiles’s favourite drive through and took him to a secluded area in the forest surround the hale property. He didn’t force anything, but just talked, about the movies they liked, the bands they didn’t and by the time Derek gave Stiles gave the lift back to his house, for Derek had brought his own car for the date, Stiles already had a few delicious kisses from Derek.

And that is how Stiles got his first boyfriend. He made a point of never ignoring Scott over Derek and when Scott started dating Isaac on the sly, he was very supportive of their love life. The sheriff grilled Derek to his specification, with all the expected threats of how he could lock Derek up in the jail or get him arrested or even shot and Derek took it so well. He took it so well that he no longer sat when the sheriff was in the room and while it was fun initially, the look of absolute terror that shone on his face before he could wipe it off made Stiles mad enough to yell at his father enough times that the sheriff finally sat Derek down and had a nice little talk. Derek still refused to sit down, but he didn’t look ready to piss anymore. 

Derek found about the nail three months into dating Stiles. It had been a very, very, stressful day for Stiles, two tests, a presentation, a call to the principal’s office and he was just vibrating in his skin by the time he reached home, he was strung up so tight. He ripped out black pages, which Stiles usually avoided, going for old used up pages for there was no real need of destroying paper needlessly and tore them into bits before pushing them onto the nail. Derek got to see him do the same thing 4 more times for him to make the link between Stiles’ anxiety and this method of calming.

That is when Derek decided that in order to prove that he was a good boyfriend, he took the help of his uncle Peter Hale to build a nest of nails, places appropriately apart on a wooden slat so that Stiles would not have to keep pulling his table out from its corner. He also got screw able cover tops for the nails with a spherical base of the nails so that he could keep them covered when he is not using them. Stiles’ anxiety shared the same space as his clumsiness after all.

In fact it was reason why Stiles kept that corner of his table tucked away into the wall. There was too good a chance that he would fall on the bail or break his skull open on it, so why even take the chance. Derek packed the weird looking thing, all the Hales personally curious as to what something like that could be sued as except as a retro piece of decoration which was so not Stiles, who they had come to know pretty well and like as well from the times he came over for Derek.

In addition to the wooden thingie, Derek also packed up a big collection of kite paper, thin and in varied colours, some thick origami paper as well as a huge stack of scratch sheets. On reaching Stiles’ house, where they had plans of watching some movies, lounging on the sofa, some hot pizza and some slow making out. So when he handed the full bag to Stiles, he frowned at Derek, wondering what it was. When he found the wooden thing with the nails poking out with a few metal tops off that came off in the jostle of his car, Derek explained haltingly what it was.

Stiles was shocked at first and then delighted. He gave a very hearty kiss to Derek, leaving his eyes all wide and his mouth pink and wet with saliva. Stiles took everything to his room and with another bashful glance at the gift returned to make out some more with Derek. Some days, Stiles’ anxiety made him wish for things to be different with the depth of his soul, worried how he will ever manage to go through his life with such an anxiety prone existence. Scott helped to a huge extent as did his dad too.

Derek though, Derek made it not matter in the end.

**Author's Note:**

> I thing Coach Lahey would have been quite homophobic even if Camden did not die. That is why they date in secret. Thank you for reading. Kudos and comments! (Unbetaed)


End file.
